Wow, Racecar do you have ANY understanding about the history of CART and the IRL? I mean, seriously, any knowledge whatsoever?
CART (now the Champ Car World Series or whatever Gentilozzi and the rest of those ****heads call it) started out as a rebellion of team owners against the United States Auto Club (USAC) which previously sanctioned Indy Car racing.
These were the salad days of the Indy 500. The two main chassis constructors were McLaren and Gurney Eagle, and the engines were primarily the mythical Offenhauser. In these days, Indy was still the goal of every American driver, still the richest race in the world, and the circuit was still oval.
Car owners, as the 70's became the 80's, wanted more say in purses, rules, and procedure. They broke off from USAC (a devastating move that wouldn't come back to bite them in the ass until the 90's). and formed Championship Auto Racing Teams.
They went road racing, brought in ten tons of sponsorship dollars, garnered some F1 drivers, and everything was okay...............
UNTIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CART, in their infinite lack of wisdom, attempted to divert focus from both the Indy 500 (dumbasses wanted to make Long Beach the headline act, stupid mother****ers), oval racing, and local American short tracks. As American open wheel drivers no longer moved up into Indy cars, and public interest (and as such, sponsorship and factory dollars) waned, CART decided that going further to become a sort of "American F1" was the solution, while Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Tony George felt that a more cost controlled, all oval series with production based engines was the solution.
In 1996, the two broke apart, CART went on its own way, and Tony George formed the Indy Racing League.
Neither one worked. Both lost car counts, and continually revised rules to try and build fields and fan interest failed, and the flow of American open wheel drivers out of the old USAC ladder system and into NASCAR rides hamstrung open wheel racing in America.
As of right now, CART is running basically the same cars they ran in 1996. Turbo V8 powered Lolas and Reynards. Panoz is the first company to step forward with a new idea in CART. IRL ran ex-CART cars (as many of the teams were defecting from CART) until G-Force and Dallara came up with the new Olds Aurora OR Infiniti Q45 powered Indy cars.
Of course, thanks to Panoz/G-Force chassis, Toyota and Honda, and a lot of development, the IRL cars have ben in continual development while the CART Champ Cars have been frozen in time.
Thus the comment that "CART cars look like old IRL cars". CART came first.
And both organizations are the result of abandoning the fine motorsports traditions of American open wheel and the USAC organization.
http://www.weismann.net/indy.html
Here's a great trip back through the salad days.
I smell domination.👍
